The systems and methods of the present invention are directed towards the educated replacement of a title for a user defined or supplied content item. In certain types of databases, such as a question and answer database such as YAHOO! ANSWERS™, users may enter title data in a free-form manner, thus resulting in malformed or otherwise unhelpful title data. Using such systems, a search engine returns title data for content items that users supply as a ranked list of content item titles, such as question titles. Malformed titles, such as “ipods???” or “can someone help me?” provide little information to a user performing a title search of the database. This results in a poor search results page that may prove inefficient and costly, especially on client devices where the review of a substantial number of items in a search result set incurs additional costs, such as on PDAs, cell phones and other mobile devices with limited screen space or bandwidth.
Although titles may be malformed, the body of a content item often contains a wealth of information related to the subject or topic of the content item. Additionally, other data resident within the database may aid in the construction of a more relevant title for a given content item. For example, in a question and answer database, the content of answers to a question may further outline the true subject matter of the question and, therefore, the title.
There is thus a need in the art for systems, methods and computer program products for analyzing content items within a database to provide alternative titles that more clearly define the subject or topic of a content item. Specifically, a need exists in a questions and answers database to replace uninformative titles with more succinct and informative titles that may be generated using the content of the question itself.